


pegasus grounded

by Anonymississippi



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: 1920s, Coney Island and Atlantic City, F/F, General Danvers Week, Historical AU, Horse Racing, Prohibition, post-WWI ennui
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-06
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-11-28 08:46:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11414361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonymississippi/pseuds/Anonymississippi
Summary: Everything changed by 1920.War was no longer romantic, booze was no longer legal, and horses... horses didn't hold the same sort of usefulness as a locomotive or a Model T. Modernism had rendered entire lifestyles impotent.But Alex Danvers knew horses. Knew them well enough to carve a life out tending to them. So the call to the Steel Pier in Atlantic City doesn't exactly take her by surprise. But the flying horses, and the star that rides them?Well... Alex Danvers never planned on her.





	1. Chapter 1

 

**Brooklyn, New York 1908**

 

 

 

Alex peered down from her perch atop the dune as the laborers heaved against the ropes in aggressive synchronicity, as the steam billowed into a sky of powder blue and the locomotive engine lurched against the rails laid in haste by the hands of the crewman. Ropes, seemingly as long as the straight-aways on the track at which her father worked, spread like a hand splayed over the sandy earth.

Large hooks were wrapped round the columns of the Brighton Beach Hotel, as if a giant were reaching out and digging into the building’s façade with its crackling, rusted fingernails. Behind the eastern wall of the hotel churned a disgruntled sea, no doubt grumbling to the sky in silent conversation over the audacity of man—first, that He would build a resort of such expanse and expense so close to the water, and secondly, that He would contrive a method to move the building in order to save His investment from the ocean’s inevitable reach.

And what an investment for Mr. Engleman, the hotel’s original proprietor!

He was no racing man from the start, but a mule-man, who’d made his fortune trading horseflesh to both sides in the Civil War. With that money came the purchase of Brighton Beach and the beginnings of this resort, with fifty-four luxurious rooms, ten suites, four stories, no less than six turrets, and a wrap-around porch with beach access at every turn.

Alex held memories of families on holiday, mothers sitting in their skirts atop the wooden beach chairs at the porch; teenagers heaving horseshoes across the sandy lawn; men of all rugged and daring sort in vests and caps and stained trousers, drinking amber liquids from short tumblers at the bar while the gas lights flickered in the night. The heavy shutters were painted sea-foam green and reminded Alex of fairy stories, of aquamarine jewels merfolk would polish in the water, of stones that glistened at the bottom of tidal pools that were only a twenty minute’s walk from the sandy horse track to the north.

There were outlying houses as well, some to the south, some wedged between the resort and the stable, at which most of the resort’s seasonal workers would reside. Thankfully, her father was employed year-round and was compensated with a small stipend and a suite at the hotel, a secure luxury most of the Brighton workers could not boast. Her mother was credited with the horses as well, though she was not paid for her expertise. Eliza could look at a horse’s teeth, the worn grinding at the back, the tension in the jaw, the sores that would crust round the brown and purple lips from the cut of the racing bit, and she could predict performance throughout the entire summer racing season. She was also one of the most accomplished side-saddled riders on the east coast, but Alex would not discover this until after the war, and their resultant falling out.

In 1908, Alex was nine years old and the Danvers were a horse family.

The Brooklyn Jockey Club was fighting the temperance movement gaining steam on the mainland. Seeds of discontent were being sewn in Europe, and many of the able-bodied young men Alex had seen working nearly every summer since her birth would not live through the next decade.

It was not yet a tumultuous time, but the tumult would come. Alex would survive, even if her father wouldn’t. She would witness modern marvels and modern fashions and modern modes of transportation. She would get swept up in liquor and a modern mindset to compensate for her loss.

But for the present, Alex watched her father move a building and believed him the greatest man on earth.

The men below her defied nature and sense, battling shifting sands and the creaking sway of the resort’s beams, all to surprisingly successful avail. The locomotive inched along and marvelous pieces of the building did as well: the sanded, hand-carved gables, the boarded shutters, the second-story balcony… they each withstood the tension of their slow creep inland, away from the hungry water.

Her father, Jeremiah Danvers, tugged hard on the central rope, shouting and digging his boots in the sand along with nearly fifty other men. The hotel continued to move at the behest of the steam engine, but nothing collapsed. Nothing fell, except perhaps the universe’s ego, as it reckoned with the ingenuity, stubbornness, and resolve of men in the Modern era.

Alex looked up at her mother, observing the men below. Eliza stood with her hand at her throat, face relaxed, expressionless, clad in her off-white, ankle-length skirts. Her hair was piled atop her head in the fashion of the day. She gracefully bore the tight suck of the corset beneath her blouse, the mother-of-pearl buttons that stretched up her throat, the tuff of lace at her neck. Alex had always believed her mother beautiful, a truly magnificent lady; that is, until her latest trip to the stables on the north beach, where even her mother’s natural elegance was overshadowed by the bustled drape of fabrics in the women’s swishing skirts, bold colors and feathered hats, jeweled brooches and hand-crafted cameos, all painstakingly selected for a day at the races on the north beach.

The affairs at the competing Manhattan Beach were far more genteel than the rough-and-tumble crowds at Brighton. As the lead stable hand, it was her father’s job to play janitor, guard, and bookie, and, apparently, day-laborer, charged as he was with the rest of the Brighton men to save the hotel before it collapsed against the shoreline. Poor planning on the part of the architects forty years prior; however, with the protests over the depravity of gambling and drink coming from the city proper with new-wave Temperance, Alex understood that saving the hotel would save money, and, as a result, save her father’s job. So she watched as her home, the Brighton Beach Hotel, made the plodding journey four-hundred yards inland.

“When will we get to go back?” she asked Eliza.

The three of them had been cooped up in a loft at the stable for four days now. In the beginning, it was something of an adventure, but the initial novelty was wearing thin. Though nestling in straw was warm enough for three on the Brooklyn seashore in a chilling April, the stable was a place for _horses_ , not humans, Alex had said earlier that morning. Eliza had merely smiled and returned to her task, rubbing the curry brush in tight, circular strokes along Carmichael’s Son’s withers.

“I don’t know,” her mother responded tightly, the lines of her face drawn thin as the wind picked up, as a thundering _crash!_ caused the locomotive to halt its advance. Men slumped against the ropes and took what minor respite they could while those maintaining the rail cars upon which the foundation of the building rested rushed to the porches for the first of what would likely be many pauses in the movement of the property.

“Can I go see Venus?”

“Take the broom,” Eliza commanded, though she did not budge from her spot on the dune.

At nine years old, Alex had swept up after more horses than she could count. She wasn’t even as tall as the broom, but her daily task was assured if she wanted to visit her favorite filly. She couldn’t be idle; men had little patience for a child in the stables, especially a girl. So Alex often took her broom and brush, just as her mother did, and learned early that knowledge and usefulness would get her fairly far in life, but especially in horse racing.

 

 

* * *

 

 

**Atlantic City, New Jersey 1925**

 

****

 

Alex brought a flat hand over her brow and squinted against the midday brightness, certain she was in the wrong place. There was the ocean, and the boardwalk, and the sign that read _Steel Pier,_ painted in letters larger than some horses she’s tended to, but there was no way in hell that this place, with these cacophonous, claustrophobic crowds, housed a stable with any degree of repute. Not that Alex had found work in generally reputable stables since they outlawed gambling in New York before the war.

The tracks had closed in Brooklyn by 1913, and soon enough, her family found themselves homeless, her father out of a job and desperate, desperate enough for a man to join an outmatched cavalry in the first technological war of the age.

The war ended a few years ago, but Alex has been on her own finding work in various stables on the eastern seaboard for much longer than that. Her mother was still living, though Alex didn’t visit much. She just roamed, and did the jobs that she’d grown up learning. The stuff that she knew with every ounce of her brain power.

And what she knew, amazingly, was horses.

And horses, no matter what kind, would never be _here_.

“Step right up and see the _bearded lady_!” the crier shouted into a megaphone and gestured toward a garish tent, beckoning children with nickels in their pockets.

Kids with dirt smudges on their faces and powdered sugar staining their cheeks sacrificed their precious coins for a chance to lay eyes on one of the many oddities the Steel Pier advertised at admission (This caterwauling man assumed the children still had coins left, though many had wasted their meager savings on rigged games with rings and baseballs and bottles, bobbing apples, funnel cakes, greasy, slimy meats and caramelized popcorn. Alex could see the money changing hands at a rapid pace, and she wondered who was trusted with the responsibility of counting admissions fees at the close of the park each night).

A mass of unchaperoned children scuttled by and Alex felts the pier sway under their momentum. She checked her pockets for thieves, and tugged her cap down tighter over her bobbed hair.

Dressed in gentleman’s clothes for the work, perhaps the kids didn’t think her a suitable target for their pick-pocketing. Maybe they thought Alex too quick, quick enough to stick out a hand and catch theirs, holding onto any bills they might’ve found in her pockets. Alex was indeed that quick, years of yanking her fingers out of the mouths of ornery animals had sharpened reflexes even those who’d been press-ganged into joining up with the Doughboys couldn’t match… but it wasn’t as if Alex had any money for the kids to steal.

They might’ve gotten her flask, her only solace during these dry yet paradoxically decadent times.

The creak of the boards underfoot found Alex flexing her toes against the stockings wadded up at the front of her boots; her footwear was overlarge, salvaged from an old army service shop she thought she’d use for mucking about in stables on odd jobs. She didn’t like to think about where they came from because someone probably died in these boots, but the government couldn’t pass up the chance to turn profit on them. She’d scrubbed them meticulously once she’d acquired them, spit shine and all, trying to distance herself from the horror stories she’d heard about the front, about gas masks, about how even the horses had to wear those long, cumbersome hoses attached to bags over their heads.

She thought of horses screaming in barn fires, fires she helped douse, then thought about the elephant-like masks of soldiers and how poisonous gas was incendiary and blistering. She grimaced involuntarily and tried to shake the image, all the while knowing the animals would’ve been the first abandoned to such threats on the front.

_Water on straw, buckets from the trough and an assembly line of stable hands, all carrying water toward the barn as the horses screamed like children…_

She’d done it countless times. But chemical burns? Skittishness that could not be trained away? Animals returning from war looked nearly as rough as their owners, and Alex was finding it quite the challenge to adopt her treatment methods. Arthritis treatment? Cribbing? Soothing over-excited animals? That was her specialty.

But these horses... these _soldiers_ , they were a new, pitiable breed.

She’d made contact with a handful of owners who had inherited beasts that had withstood great ills in Europe, loaded down with supplies and whipped until they could no longer stand. Those horses could turn no profit, do no work, and Alex had watched as disgusted owners did what made the most sense; instead of wasting time, energy, and money to feed and board a beast with no use, they put a bullet through its brain or shipped it to the nearest adhesive factory.

Horses were her life, and had been with her for even longer than her father and mother, at this point. Horses had brought her here, to this overcrowded park of light and leisure. It was not what she was accustomed to, and she felt entirely out of place.

Alex set to rolling her sleeves up toward her elbows as she walked onward in her deadman’s boots and pushed thoughts of the war aside, fingering her suspenders as she ducked round a booth to get her bearings.

She’d already been strong-armed into a crowed gathered round the Bathing Beauties, women posing in elasticated bathing suits that hit just above their knees, carrying lavish parasols to shield their creamy skin from the beaming sun overhead. They paraded about on a raised stage while onlookers observed, judging their features. Cubist shapes and slinky straps, a drop waist, arms, legs, necks for days…the suits were like nothing she’d ever seen before, not even back on Coney, not even with some of the outrageous fashions in the city. Short, tight, bright, and molded to the women’s forms.

Alex could hardly look away.

Those warm tingles she felt low in her abdomen when she saw beautiful women at cosmetics counters in department stores returned ten-fold as each Beauty took her place at the front of the stage. Alex was both intrigued and appalled, marveling at the brazen disregard of propriety—and yet, not marveling at all, for recent years had shown her how little the city-folk of the Roaring Twenties regarded propriety.

Alex removed her flask from her pocket and discreetly took a sip, lingering a moment longer on kneecaps and clavicles, knuckles not covered by dainty lace gloves and ankles laid bare without stockings to block her view. After a long eyeful, Alex soldiered onward, catching a whiff of ocean, of salt, and the familiar scent of saddle oil, of straw, of barn and horse and rider.

But again, no stables in sight; naught but crowds and salt-soaked timbers, thick as the ocean beyond the rail. Ahead loomed one fearsome tower, perhaps sixty, no,  _seventy_ feet high, with a strange ramp raised diagonally toward the spacious landing at the top. The ramp served as the stilt-supported hypotenuse of some bizarre carnival triangle, plopped carelessly in the middle of the pier.

The ramp itself almost looked like a chute for herding cattle, covered, wooden, but not crudely fashioned, though the angle seemed queer. It led straight to the top of the tower, where a woman in one of those revealing bathing costumes stood, waving, raising her arms and clapping and inciting general chaos within the cheering spectators. Alex heard the telltale _clip-clop_ of shod hooves, singled out the vibrations of a stilted gait from the rustling weight-shifts of a maddening crowd.

Another sign caught her attention, not as large as the one that had heralded her arrival at the pier in the first place (yet no less impressive). It had been nailed mid-way up the wooden tower and painted in that aquamarine color Alex had found so enchanting as a child:

 

_STEEL PIER  
_

_High-Diving Horses_

 

No.

Surely not.

And yet the tower stood tall, the ramp on one side, an ungated, sheer drop on the other, and at the bottom of that drop, a massive tank, at least fifteen feet deep, filled and sloshing with salt water pumped in from below the pier. Standing center on a board that jutted out over the crowd was that cheerful woman, her hair tucked away from the wind in a scalloped bathing cap, her body lithe, muscular, a red bathing suit hugging the supple expanse of her middle; her smile was captivating, her showmanship—every bit as spellbinding as the feat she would soon perform.

Alex heard a whinny and turned her head reluctantly from that smile toward the bottom of the ramp. There, a stallion tossed his head and looked up, setting his sights toward the zenith of the tower. He needed no prompting, though there was one small blonde girl at his side, patting his shoulder as he took position. A bell rang, three discordant _dings_ , and the crowd quieted. The horse began to climb, and the woman dropped her hands and pivoted back to all twelve square feet of the landing before her.

The stallion was chestnut and large, easily sixteen hands high, though likely even taller—if Alex could get a proper look at eye level and not… well, ground level. White stockings crept up to his knobbed knees but he wore no mask on his face to shield his eyes or block out the crowds. He wore no bridle at all, actually. He merely ascended with practiced patience; Alex noticed one minor hitch in his gait, the rear left leg giving just a bit, so she wondered if that was the reason for her call.

Once it began, it was quick. A feat like this one had to be performed at such a pace, primarily so that neither the horse nor the rider could feel uncertainty mount. It seemed that if one did not dive with confidence, a miscalculation would surely occur.

And so it went: the chestnut stallion trotted up the platform. Once it reached the top of the tower and began walking toward the ledge, the rider-turned-diver heaved herself over the back of the horse by gripping its mane, curling her abdominals, and leaping, gracefully as the steeplechase, onto its back. And the horse plodded forward, bent its back knees, and shifted over the edge and onto a wooden board—not a spring board, but something of a launch pad—for it took mere seconds for the horse to slide its back legs over the platform’s ledge and leap out, just slightly, trained so expertly, that it hit the water with a massive splash, sixty feet below.

Water slammed against the sides of the container and sloshed over the rim of the tank, dousing the spectators who looked back toward the top of the platform in utter astonishment. Seconds later, the rider surfaced with the stallion, beaming atop its back.

Water streamed in rivulets down that blood-red bathing costume and fell in sheets off the honed musculature of the horse. He scrabbled out on a ramp that had been submerged in the tank and the woman dismounted, waving grandly, before tapping the beast’s shoulder to prompt him into a kneeling bow.

In an instant, the show was over. Crowds moved onto the next act, the crier shouted times at the top of his lungs through the megaphone, and the diver’s smile—that sickle-slice of white, brilliant and enchanting—it fell. It plummeted from her face as easily as horse and rider might plummet from the top of a treacherous tower.

Alex pushed against the flow of the crowd, shouldering parents and children out of the way. She looked up at the platform where the rider and the stallion had triumphantly surfaced, but she was no longer there. She kept moving, following her nose, following the sick-sweet smell of manure and straw mingled with saltwater.

“Hello?” she called out, slipping down some rather precarious stairs hidden from view of the spectators on the pier.

“Hello?” she said again, her voice lost in the forest of saturated, mossy beams beneath the tower, the grandstand, the platforms.

Gulls screeched and the waves echoed loud and hollow beneath the pier; the feet above her sounded like rumbling thunder off the ocean. Sand fell from between the cracks in the boards overhead and she had to squint again in this shaded darkness, her eyes readjusting after having been fighting the blinding afternoon sun.

“Alex Danvers.”

Alex stalked to the edge of the lower level of the wooden pier and looked over the railing. On the sand below stood the woman, the once-smiling, now solemn diver, and her chestnut horse. She was toweling off the horse with great care, rubbing at its neck and moving about in that practiced, confident way that was testament to a lifetime of interacting with such creatures.

“Huh?”

“You are Alex Danvers, are you not?” the-woman-in-red called up in a heavily accented voice, stilted, vowels round and thick and lovely, a voice Alex had never heard before.

“Yeah, that’s… that’s me.”

“The stables are located one half mile to the south,” she said, pointing toward the rising dunes. “I will bring Comet to you there in one hour, after our final show.”

“Oh, uhm, okay. You sure you don’t want me to pop down and take a look—”

“That is not necessary,” she interrupted. “You are here at the order of my employer, not me. We need not waste your time.”

“It’s not a waste if I can help yo—”

“Thank you, Alex Danvers,” the woman said, stroking Comet’s nose soothingly. “We will meet with you shortly.”

Alex wanted to protest that she hadn’t even been properly _paid_ yet, although the guy who ran this place was a good friend of one of her dad’s friends, back in the war, back before racing days, back when Jeremiah Danvers was a name that went a long way on certain racing circuits. And Alex Danvers… well, the first few times she showed up to stables, she was nearly turned away.

 _Alex Danvers? I thought you were his_ son. _Miss, I really don’t think we need your help._

But she’d taken what work they would give her, and done it well enough that her sex was a less a hindrance and more a novelty, which actually worked in her favor for places like this. Coney Island. Atlantic City. Two of the biggest entertainment venues on the Eastern Seaboard, and Alex was being dismissed by some foreign lady with a death wish like she hadn’t treated some of the top racing horses (off the books, unfortunately—because racing had been outlawed for nearly as long as Alex had been on her own) in the country. But Alex grit her teeth and told herself it was just another job, another horse, and another owner, and she’d do what she was being paid to do.

Alex told herself all of these things.

By the end of the night, she didn’t believe any of them.

 

* * *

 

 

“Bad news, Miss--uh, sorry, what's your name again?”

"My name is Astra."

"Miss Astra? Or just... well anyway, bad news Astra," Alex said, shifting up to tug the release knot on the front shoulder hobble. She’d spent the better portion of an hour with Comet’s hind foot raised, inspecting the leg all the way from the hoof to the flank for any signs of injury.

“I had assumed so.”

Astra the Silent should have been her stage name, for she did not speak a word when Alex entered the stable. She merely stared with cool superiority during Alex’s assessment, occasionally deigning to swipe a damp cloth along a fanciful saddle she'd thrown over the stable door. The leather was supple and the stitching magnificent. The piece was likely worth more than the horse Alex was currently tending to.

“He is lame, is he not?” Astra said. Her tone sounded callous, removed, as if she were speaking of an animal that she had never ridden or looked after. As if her livelihood didn’t depend upon this beast.

“…to a degree. It’s called laminitis. The hoof, there’s soft tissue there, and the scar tissue from—well, I don’t know what happened to him, but he’s been putting excess pressure on that back left leg and irritating—”

“He cannot dive, then.”

Alex removed the lead from Comet’s head and noted the thin layer of straw in the stall. Best practice would be softer bedding, a constant supply of fresh water, perhaps even several hours of hobbling the affected area. It was strange to see the saddle, so painstakingly crafted, the leather glistening, the jewels—those were _rubies_ —embedded along the hems of the leather flaps, and to reconcile its beauty with the state of the stable: improperly maintained, decrepit, ruined.

Perhaps if Astra the Silent actually cared about the upkeep of her horse's stall as much as she did her precious saddle, her mounts would not suffer from preventable ailments.

“He needs to be off his leg for at least a month. The edema is growing, he won’t be able to—”

“Edema?”

“Swelling. To be safe, I’d call a farrier and have his shoes replaced as soon as—”

“Thank you for your time, Alex Danvers,” Astra said, disposing of her polishing rag, carefully pushing her saddle along the top of the stall door. “That is all.”

Alex rolled her rope up and shook her head, unwilling to leave. “Listen, you’ve got to do something about this,” she said, gesturing toward Comet’s hindquarters. “This isn’t just going to go away without proper treatment.”

“He is twenty-three years old,” Astra returned sternly. She let herself into the stall and reached out to place her hand over the white star between Comet’s eyes. “You are telling me very little that I do not already know.”

“Then why have me here at all, if you know so much?” Alex huffed.

“So that my employer might allow me to purchase more straw, better oats, and a professional shoeing job from a farrier as opposed to my ineffectual efforts.”

Alex eyed Astra warily and took a quick look at her hands. For all the world, they looked smooth as silk, save for a jagged cylindrical blister that had healed over… it resembled the width of a hot poker with depressing similarity.

“You… you shoed him yourself?”

“I tried,” Astra explained. “But I fear I did more harm than good. Mr. Simon treats these animals like humans, and though they are resilient…”

Astra brought her forehead against Comet’s nose and sighed. His warm, wet breath tickled the ends of dark hair that had been hidden beneath her swimming cap since the performance. That white streak running the length of his nose almost matched the one dangling from Astra’s temple. The striking, melancholy parallels of a stable gone to ruin kept Alex from sniping again; she should have realized that it’s never the people who deal directly with the horses that have control over their fates.

Just the people making a profit.

“…I would never ask him to withstand the same trials a human would,” Astra finished. “He has done too much to be treated so poorly.”

“Your employer?” Alex asked, confused.

“No, Comet,” Astra clarified, stroking his face soothingly. "My bright _C_ _ometă_."

“That scar tissue on the back leg… that’s pretty bad.”

“An old wound, from back home in Romania. It was infected from the mud… it never properly healed.”

“A… a battle wound, was it?”

“He was a war horse,” Astra explained, and suddenly the ghosts in both their eyes made much more sense to Alex. “And he was magnificent.”

“Explains why he seems so comfortable jumping off towers,” Alex said, placing a solid hand on his neck.

Astra smirked at Alex’s remark and drew her fingers through Comet’s mane. His coat was well maintained, his musculature quite balanced. He was not overweight, and his teeth were in impeccable condition. He was large, a strong breed, one that might’ve even looked magnificent if given the proper tack and accessories with which to parade.

“He would jump across mountains and valleys if I urged him to,” Astra replied.

“How long have you had him?” Alex asked.

“I have known him for his entire life,” she said sadly. “He was a gift at birth and is… very precious to me.”

“What can I do to help?” Alex asked. Because the way Astra looked at that horse reminded her of her mother, of her father, of vets she’d seen working in stables; of haunted soldiers who had seen their mounts die and yet would still return to the stalls to fill up water buckets for an animal who would never drink. It was sacred, the bond between horse and rider, and for some reason, with this strange display of horsemanship, Alex wanted—no, she _needed_ to make things right.

“There’s nothing you can do. Though I… I do appreciate your concern, Alex Danvers.”

“There has to be something, I—it’s not that he can’t _walk_ , it’s just the terrain… the sand is no good on hips like his. He needs grass, pastures, a proper stall in a proper stable—”

“And you have the money for that, do you?” Astra asks, though the quip is not malicious. Defeated, perhaps, but with a hint of knowing humor. “I had the chance, but… I fear it is too late.”

“What’s too late?”

“An escape,” Astra answered. “From this… this _side-show_ that I have become. It is no life for the horses, no life for Ka—I mean…” Astra backed away from Comet’s neck and retreated from the stall, hefting the saddle from the half door and nodding toward Alex. “It has been… refreshing speaking with you, Miss Danvers. You are not what I expected.”

“Why is that?” Alex asked, lost to the liquid weight of storm-grey eyes and secrets she would never know.

“You care.”


	2. Chapter 2

“Wait!” Alex shouted, because how dare anyone say something so heartbreaking and then walk away? How dare they accuse her of caring as deeply as she does (as deeply as she hides), and leave without a second glance?

“Wait, I…” Alex made sure the stall was clear before slipping out herself and following Astra into the tack room. She watched as the woman removed a key from the drape of her skirts and placed the saddle in a cool cupboard. She locked the cupboard in three places, with two keys, which had Alex quirking a brow in confusion. Everything about Astra and her horses seemed strange, and here Alex was, begging to help her.

“How much do you need?” Alex asked (though that was not the first question that she expected to fall from her lips).

“Pardon?”

“How much?” Alex asked again. “For whatever it will take to get you where you need to be…”

“California,” Astra said, placing incredulous hands upon slim hips.

“Cali— _California_?!”

“Yes,” Astra answered. “There is a place for Comet there, a retirement pasture. I’ve found a position as well, teaching languages, songs, for film and…and it is much more open than your east coast. There is a house for Kara and I; we want to forget Romania, the war, our lost stables—”

“Kara?” Alex asked, picking up on a name she thought she’d heard before, but never caught. “Who is Kara?”

“My niece,” Astra answered with a sad smile. She crossed her arms over her chest and Alex watched the sleeves of her long white shirt tug and pull over the muscles. Her frame was deceptively athletic, more lithe than bulk; she possessed a lissome neck, a strong chin, a perfectly tapered waist… had Astra wanted to give up the riding aspect of her routine, she might’ve fared well in the Bathing Beauties competitions. “She is very dear to me,” Astra mumbled, averting her eyes as she spoke of her niece. “The only family I have left.”

“You must love her very much,” Alex said. “To make such a journey… to _pay_ for such a journey.”

“Kara is my light,” Astra said. “But to transport myself, her, the two horses and our few possessions, we would need great luck and extensive accommodations. No matter how I save, my salary at the park would never be enough for the tickets. I’ve taken to performing elsewhere, but the train for Chicago leaves from Grand Central at first light, and I am seventy-five dollars short. My contract… I’ve held off on signing as long as I can, but I fear it is simply…”

Alex watched as Astra’s shoulders fell. The reserved woman leaned back against the cupboards and tilted her head back, as if she were hoping the ceiling or whatever god lived beyond it might give her an answer he had thus far been reluctant to provide. She shut her eyes and sighed, her collar bones jutting forward under some invisible load Alex might never know about.

Her resignation was simultaneously astonishing and bleak. Alex could draw a host of comparisons about shooting stars and flying comets, but she’d never seen someone that looked like a damn angel have to reckon with having her wings clipped.

“Are you sure it’s… I mean… _seventy-five_ dollars?” Alex repeated, just to be sure.

“And how would I even begin to transport two horses and a girl of ten, other than by rail?” Astra pressed the sides of her temples with her fingers.

Alex curbed the compulsion to cup those ashen cheeks in her hands and soothe her pain away. Yet something about this extraordinary woman with the thick accent and the strange hair and the bizarre talent with horses drew her in and refused to release her.

Astra reminded her of the stories her mom used to read her. There was the exiled hero, Bellerophon, who tamed the winged horse. Monster-slayer. Celebrated warrior. Brought low by fickle gods and left without his favored mount.

Would Astra be brought low by something as unremarkable as money? Would she lose her priceless saddle, or her mounts, who seemed even more precious to her? Would she lose her niece? To… well, if not to hubris, then perhaps to misfortune? Hers was a dangerous feat performed multiple times _daily_ , and only would a mount of good health be able to make such a jump. It was startlingly simple for Alex.

There really was only one thing she could do.

“Let me help you,” Alex insisted, wondering just how much she was willing to risk for a stranger, no matter how beautiful she was.

“How do you propose to do that?”

“I know a place,” Alex said, turning over her shoulder to check the halls of the stable, to see if any human ears were lurking round corners that might find her out. “A club. Jazz, booze… cards,” Alex explained. “I was supposed to go there tonight anyway, after I… well, my payment from your boss won’t be the kind of buy-in for me to get at the table with the heavy-rollers, but if you’ve got any kind of collateral—”

“You would gamble with my future?” Astra asked.

“I’d win.” Confidence rose like smokey curls from cigarettes she lit for pretty girls round the alley entrances of speakeasies back in the city. Horses and gambling and booze and women… it wasn’t as if Alex was a stranger to any of it. But this seemed too important to chock up to pride, to confidence; she needn’t be back-handed by an angry god because her pride got the better of her. “Listen, I’m good. It’s chance, but I can promise you, I… I always win.”

“You would promise a… _chance_? Do you hear yourself?”

“No risk, no reward.”

“If that is the case, why do you do this?” Astra asked, gesturing toward the stable and the dirt floor, the straw and the oils and the leathers. Her eyes finally met Alex’s and held them, captured them, demanded that she justify her claims. “If you are so well-off that you can acquire money through gambling, then you must be… deranged, or something, to insist upon helping me.”

“In case you’ve forgotten, gambling is _illegal_ now,” Alex quipped. “People who win big have big profiles. They need a lot more people to look out for them than I have. Risk big, win big, but it’s not always about winning. It’s about doctoring books and skimming taxes and—listen, one big night at the tables for me won’t draw attention if I never show my face here again. I can do it, _I can_ , I just need your faith.”

“I have little faith in gambling; and in truth, _faith_ is not what you need from me,” Astra scoffed prettily. “You need my money, what little I have left of it. If I give it all to you and you fail, I’ll not be able to make rent. Not for the stable _or_ the apartment.”

“I’ll win.”

Astra shook her head and kicked the ground beneath her, crumbling a little glob or dirt and straw beneath her heel. “You’re reckless.”

“And you’re intrigued, or you wouldn’t still be here talking to me.”

Astra bit her tongue, clearly unprepared for such a comeback. She slung one strap of her bag over her shoulder but waited her out, giving Alex the chance to speak her piece even though she was clearly irritated. She tapped her foot impatiently and gestured for Alex to get on with it.

“You jump horses off of diving platforms for a living and you love it,” Alex said, inching ever closer toward Astra, who had clearly never had someone speak to her like this. “You’re in it for the thrill just as much as I am, and I know it sounds crazy, but I want to help you. Maybe I like the idea of a little girl getting to grow up around horses and not have her dreams crushed by issues with money.”

Her foot stopped tapping. The clench of her jaw loosened, and at the mention of the girl… her head dipped enough for Alex to notice. Her resolve was weakening, and Alex found it all the more breathtaking.

“Maybe I like the idea of a woman who loves horses actually being able to ride them again over open space, instead of keeping them boarded while her employer exploits her talent for a profit.”

Astra's head snapped back up at the comment. “Is that what you like, Alex Danvers?” Astra’s voice had sunk to the lowest octave she’d heard in their time together, to something tempting and dark. Astra moved from the bench and abandoned her bag, surveying Alex’s get-up from the tips of her boots to the fluttering ends of her cropped, straight hair. “The idea of a woman?”

Heat erupted in Alex’s gut at such an implication, at such a… a _proposition_ , if that’s what was going on here. Astra moved closer, her hand extended, her lips parted and wet and painted with the remnants of a violet stain from her performance. She had perfectly shaped lips, not full, not slim, but sly, knowing, the kind of lips that could conjure a smirk in an instant; the kind of mouth whose words could burn. There was a kiss there, hidden from the moment she’d seen Alex on the docks; beneath a dimple, or possibly in the divot in the center, that concave slope of flesh beneath her nose… yes, right there on the upper lip, with its pride and protestations and beckonings that could very well leave Alex heart-broken.

Would she be able to buy it after Black-Jack? Or would Astra, the star on the galloping constellations… would she give it freely?

When her fingers finally grazed the skin of Alex’s forearm she shuddered despite knowing the touch was coming, despite seeing those hooded lids trained on her own mouth with something akin to expectancy.

“I…”

“Yes?” Astra purred, her hand slipping dangerously nearer the thin cotton covering Alex’s abdomen. She ran one finger beneath the underside of Alex’s suspenders, drawing her deeper into her perilous gravity.

“I… appreciate the gesture,” Alex said, for what a gesture! Disingenuous, to be certain, but god if Alex almost let herself believe it. “But… I really just want to help you.”

“And yet I did not hear an objection from you,” Astra said, crowding her back into the cupboards. Alex’s hands fell to her hips automatically, fit perfectly, the curve and curl of fabric and flesh reminding her just how long it had been since anyone had embraced her. “Everyone wants something, Alex,” she murmured into her ear. “No one is _that_ noble.”

“Hey wait a—no really, _listen_ , listen!” Alex said, grabbing Astra by the shoulders and spinning her, trying to stall Astra’s wondering hands as they played about her torso. When her back hit the wall she gasped and her brows pinched together; her face flushed red and Alex watched as tears began to pool at the interior of her eyes.

“Hey, it’s okay… I…” Alex said, releasing her shoulders carefully, stepping back just an inch to give her room to breathe. And in that inch she wondered why, on such a brief journey, she would reject such an offer. She was getting nothing from this, and the satisfaction of a good deed done did not pay the fee for her boarding houses, nor did it keep her flask full with her vice of choice.

So why Astra?

Why those regal cheeks? That condescending brow? Why that reckless, enchanting, insane thrill from the bareback dive? Why the gilded saddle? Why those lips? Those storm-grey eyes and their melancholic waves? How could she ever resist the chance to tame such a beautiful storm?

As Astra stood vulnerable and tense before her, the answer came upon her like lightning, like the Perseids flashing across the sky.

Perhaps it was more important to let the storm pass than it was to try and wrangle it. It might very well get her killed in the end.

“I know… well, no, I don’t know what you’ve been through to get here, or to make you think I wanted…” Alex could hardly put words to the offer, not with Astra standing stalwart and unshaken before her. “Well, to make you feel like that’s something you had to offer if you just didn’t have the money.”

Should she reach out? Take her hand? What comfort was there in a stranger’s touch if it wasn’t furtive, or passionate, or economic? What comfort was there in sincerity when this woman had obviously never seen it? And though her head was overloaded with questions, her observations, perhaps even her subconscious, were slotting suppositions and answers in place that made a helluva lot more sense to Alex than what Astra supposedly wanted her to know.

“But here’s what I figure: if your horse was in the war that probably means you were, too. And now you’re in New Jersey, not Europe, so that means you’ve come a long way to get away from that hellscape over there.”

A tear fell down Astra’s cheek and Alex caught it, rubbed it between her fingers, and for all her time spent in the ocean, she found it the most refreshing salt water she’d ever come in contact with. She swiped against that sharp, sullen cheek, wondering what the woman’s face had looked like once upon a better time.

“I don’t want anything from you,” Alex insisted, removing her last clean handkerchief and offering it to Astra. She cried silent tears, silver streams from the creases, enough that the brokenness manifested. But there were no hiccups, no gurgles, no outward displays of hurt, not enough to truly be noticed by others if she hadn’t allowed it. It seemed much too restrained a cry to be real. Or perhaps it was real, and, even worse… something that Astra had gotten very good at hiding.

Had this gorgeous daredevil always lived with such silent suffering?

“That is, I don’t want anything you wouldn’t give freely,” Alex amended, squeezing her hand reassuringly.

Astra wiped indiscriminately at her tears, soaking Alex’s handkerchief. She returned it abruptly, trained her features, and it was as if she had never cried at all. “Why are you doing this?” she murmured, voice unnaturally steady.

“Because I lost my father and my favorite horse to that war,” Alex surprised herself with the truth. “I lost my mom and my home to money, and I think the world could stand a little less loss.” Another truth, and Astra had yet to run for the hills. “I think that’s something you want for your niece, and you seem… like me, a little.”

“Is that so?” Astra asked incredulously.

“You’ve just got more to lose,” Alex was grim. “And I don’t want anyone to turn out like me.”

“You’re alone, then?”

“’S not so bad.”

“Somehow I don’t believe you,” Astra answered, and there, at the corner, perhaps not fully-fledged as it might be once she got the upper hand, but still, undeniably present… that damning smirk. Somewhere else, somewhere lurking, perhaps for Alex, perhaps for a better lover, she kept her kiss.

“Lets me help people when I wanna,” Alex said, tilting her head to offer a somber smile. “If they’ll let me.”

“Alex… _Alexandra_ Danvers,” Astra said, showing the beginnings of that gorgeous smile she usually reserved for her crowds at the pier. “You are a marvel.”

“Wait until I win seventy-five genuine American dollars before you start complementing me. I hear the tables at Arcadia are packed with sharks.”

“You mean… you’d place your bets at the Arcadia? The club on the Boardwalk?”

“That’s where all the heavy hitters roll.”

“You will never gain access to Arcadia attired as such,” Astra said, glancing up and down at Alex’s dirtied slacks, stained shirt, wrinkled cuffs and too-large boots. “Alexandra, those people are millionaires.”

“I make friends easy.”

“Liar.”

“Pessimist.”

Astra huffed, rolling her eyes. And hell if Alex didn’t fall a little harder. “I’m _performing_ there later. I took the job to supplement my finances when I believed the train tickets were still an option, and I… if you’re serious about this, I have some clothes. Well, two dresses, a gown from the ball—I… I mean, some little trinkets from fans, but that’s it. You’d need to bathe. You reek of stable.”

Alex turned to sniff her underarm, but after two weeks without a shirt-change, everything retained the same dank musk of use and wear.

“Yeah, well, you smell like ocean and horse manure, so watch it,” Alex rebutted.

“You’re infuriating.”

“You’re gorgeous.”

“Pardon?”

“Huh?” Alex blinked, a little dazed by her own admission.

She hadn’t planned on telling Astra exactly what she thought of her upon their first meeting—that she liked risk, that she was beautiful, that Alex would do everything in her power to help her—but it seemed there was some credence to those story books that told of love at first sight. Alex looked at this woman and her career, cataloged her desires and her fears, and shouldered them with the determination of Atlas. She would see Astra and her niece and their horses in California, if it was the last thing she ever accomplished.

“You should come to my apartment,” Astra said, slipping out from where Alex had boxed her in against the wall of leathers and leads. “The address, it’s a mile or so into the city, small… nothing impressive…”

“I’ll bet it beats the boarding houses I’m used to.”

“I leave for the club at ten. You should come…” Astra gave her a once over again, beginning with her over-large boots and trailing all the way up to the dirtied shirt collar at her neck. Alex really hoped she didn’t have a stain from that stew Mrs. Cochran had conjured up at her last boarding house. “…you should come by eight, and not a moment later. We’ll make you presentable.”

“Eight o’clock?”

“Eight o’clock,” Astra repeated.

She bent over the ledger for livery rates and tore a slip of paper from the corner. In ornate, curlicued script, she’d written an address, and had drawn at tiny star at the bottom. “Please be punctual, Alex Danvers,” she’d said, squeezing Alex’s fingers when she’d press the slip of paper into her palm. “You and I have a party to attend.”

 

* * *

 

“And so the warrior rode quickly, fast as lightning, fast as a cyclone travels o’er the sea, to combat the fearsome dragon.”

Alex could just make out the end of the bedtime story as she slipped into Astra’s ground floor apartment. It was tiny and dark and in an area that had Alex keeping sharp eyes out for seedy figures, but the room was excellently maintained: handsewn curtains decorated the small kitchen window; the countertops were free of food and the floors were perfectly swept; at the entrance rested a stand for one’s muddied boots; placed with elegant exactitude in the middle of the common room was a formal tea set with sugar cubes, honey stores, and fresh cream, all encased in the most delicate floral china pattern Alex had ever seen.

“And did the warrior slay the dragon, _Tanti_?”

“You must sleep, now _, rățușcă,_ and I will tell you tomorrow night. For as the warrior and his steed traveled for days on end, perhaps we will find ourselves on a great journey soon.”

“Like on the ocean, Tanti Astra?”

“Like the ocean, my darling,” Astra answered. Alex could just make out the soft glow of the gas lamp in the single bedroom, the light cast to keep away demons and ghosts for a nine-year-old sleeping in private quarters. “Pleasant dreams, dearest,” Alex heard Astra say, and so she fell against the door at the entrance, waiting until the bedtime ritual was complete in its entirety.

And yet when Astra emerged and pulled the door shut behind her, Alex’s jaw fell to the floor. Gone was the skin tight swimsuit and bathing cap, and the plain white blouse and maroon skirt from the stables; gone was a demeanor of hostility and a blank stare that gave nothing away; gone was stiff posture, gone was unruly curls and clipped steps; for before her stood a goddess, a princess, a warrior and a rider and a queen all together.

Astra’s hair was in fingerwaves, tucked tightly at her neckline and shimmering like shellacked wood at a mahogany bartop. Her hands were covered in velveteen gloves of obsidian dye; and her dress, oh god, her _dress_ , shimmered at every turn: it was black as the night, but the shimmering fringe that clung to every inch of her body seemed hand-crafted, perfectly tailored to suit a form so athletic, so lithe, so wondrously sculpted. Her lips were painted the color of blood and silver bangles encased her wrists. Faux diamonds pinched her ears and opaque stockings ran all the way up miles of leg, disappearing under the hem of her dress, which stopped (thankfully, torturously) at mid-thigh. The drop waist suited the modern style at the clubs, and Alex had felt a sudden ire rise in her chest at the thought of the men who had danced with Astra to slow jazz.

Is this what it was to be mad, or merely to be in love?

“Alex,” Astra said quickly, moving closer to embrace her. “You’re here.”

“Of course,” Alex said, relishing the hug for a second longer than was appropriate. She had not expected it, but welcomed the touch all the same. Astra smelled of vanilla and ginger, as if she had coated her skin in oils and her next mission was to press every portion of her muscles against Alex’s. “I keep my word.”

“I am grateful,” Astra said, the spark in her eye twinkling to life. “And now…” she said, leading Alex toward a patterned screen with a disturbingly violent battle depicted on its boards, “You need to get naked.”

“O-O-Okay,” Alex said, submitting to the most luxuriant touch she’d ever experienced in her adult life.

 

* * *

 

 

“Holy _fuck_!!!!”

“Shhhh!” Astra chastised, pouring another pitcher filled with steaming water into the tub, washing the soapy bubbles from the ripping surface. It looked prismatic and deep, and the boiling bubbles did give Alex some pause. “You’ll wake Kara.”

“It’s too hot,” Alex complained, gripping the edges of the tub with a hold that might have left indentations in the enamel.

“Perhaps you are too dirty,” Astra replied, pouring yet another fall of water into the tub. As Alex disrobed, Astra had removed her gloves and bangles; she dumped lavender oils into the small silver tub and proceeded to pour kettle after kettle of boiling water into the container until Alex complained that her skin might blister. Steam rose around her and filled the tiny corner behind the changing screen with lavender scents and soft sighs, the majority of which came from Alex, for she'd not had a bath like this since... well, she wasn't sure if she ever had.

It was paradise, Alex believed, to have this woman attending to her so readily. Stripped of her jewels, an apron covering her gown, it seemed that Astra could transition from role to role as easily as a chameleon. All the while they spoke of cards, of Blackjack odds and Poker bluffs and gambling scenarios that could play out at the Club Arcadia.

And all the while Alex relished the touch of a beautiful woman on her shoulders, sliding her suspenders off her arms, unbuttoning her overshirt and pulling it from her torso.

“I have twenty-eight dollars of my own,” Alex said as she’d removed her brassiere; she unbuttoned her trousers self-consciously, her eyes focused on the water and not the other woman against the wall, taking in her every move. “I’d give it to you if it was more, but… your boss is only paying me $2.15 for today’s inspection. Another fifty cents for a follow-up.”

“I have money enough to front, though I had wished it wouldn’t come to this,” Astra had said. She’d been wrestling with a beautiful golden dress with a deep V at the neckline, shimmery threads etched throughout the bodice and a scandalous cut near the thigh. It was the most feminine thing Alex had seen in ages, and she was to wear it that very evening.

“The saddle?” Alex eventually asked, wincing as she stuck her toe in the tub. She might as well have been bathing in lava.

“Yes. It is ceremonial and nothing more, but I had hoped to barter it once we arrived in California. Duck down, please,” Astra had said, and Alex had taken a deep breath and submerged herself, relenting to Astra’s hand on her head in the hot water, her guiding, probing fingers as she wetted a wash cloth and passed it forward.

Alex gasped when she surfaced, holding in a litany of swears so as not to ruin what little good faith Astra might have in her.

“Ceremonial?” Alex gaped, gritting her teeth against the heat. Steam rose around her as lavender flooded her senses. “I knew there was more to you than you were saying.”

Alex felt a liquid, cool and thick, puddle against her head. She rested against the back of the tub while Astra worked her fingers into Alex’s short hair, which elicited a sigh. Alex wondered if that smirk had come out to play, but daren’t turn to catch it. She wasn’t here for the smirk. She wasn’t really here for the kiss, either, but if all went to plan… she wouldn’t turn it down again.

Astra hummed behind her and returned to her statement. “What do you wish to know?”

The question was out of Alex’s mouth before she could stop it: “Who are you? Where did you come from? Why do you have Kara and what is her opinion of your job?” Water splashed up to her side as Astra dipped a pitcher beneath the surface.

“Tilt.”

Alex did so, but the questions continued: “Did you come through Ellis Island? Have you been… were you caught up with the hostiles during the War? What have you done and who have you been? Might you have fought?”

“Do you expect me to answer all of those in a single night?” Astra said, lathering up a wash cloth with a cream-colored bar soap. Alex leaned against the ledge of the tub, enjoying the way Astra’s fingers swiped the hair from the back of her neck. She worked in small circles, curling around her shoulders, her collar bones, twisting efficiently into her ears, as if she had experience with wiping down reluctant bathers. Alex dared not hope for more but Astra's hand did dip below the surface, swiped her chest, her breast, the fabric of the washcloth rasping gently against her nipple.

Alex groaned her pleasure and her head rolled back against the lip of the tub. “You’re quite the woman.”

Alex heard the grin in her voice as Astra moved to the other side, scrubbing her small breast and tweaking her nipple. "I pride myself on my thoroughness," she teased. “I trust you can see to the rest yourself?” Astra said, wringing the cloth of excess water, tiny drops skittering all over Alex’s neck, chest, face. Astra took one final pass over her features with the cloth (lingering against her chin, Alex noticed, wondering if it was only the steam from the bath that had left Astra’s cheeks flushed).

“I can handle it if you give me more of your background,” Alex said, taking the cloth from Astra’s wet fingers, dragging her own over the back of Astra’s hand.

Astra cleared her throat and sat back, turning away, wiping her hands on the apron and seeing to the pins in her hair.

“My name is Astraella Ioana Tereza, Countess of Moldavia, Heir Apparent to the region’s throne, until Kara comes of age. We were one of the high families of Romania until the invasion.”

“Bullshit,” Alex chuckled, tensing up when Astra tossed the soapy bar at her head.

“Hey!”

“You do not believe me?”

“Afraid not,” Alex answered, too caught up in the luxury of the bath to play into Astra’s games. “If you were some kind of royalty, wouldn’t you be back in your country trying to put together everything we dismantled?”

“There were no clear aggressors and victims… no clear winners and losers in this prolonged war,” Astra said. “And thus there are no clear leaders any longer, not in my portion of the world.”

Alex balled up a washing sponge saturated with soap and rubbed under her armpit. “Romania was with the Allies, though. Your fought with the U.S.”

“But we were occupied, nonetheless, and our nobilities scattered, destroyed.”

“Wait, let me get this straight,” Alex turned over her shoulder and gripped the edges of the tub, properly meeting Astra’s face since she’d stripped to her birthday suit and slipped into the magma that comprised the washing water. “You’re really a countess?”

“And you’re really a stablehand, but I take you at your word.”

“Just seems a little far-fetched, is all.”

“I board the heir apparent of Moldavia in the very next room, Alexandra Danvers,” Astra said, smirking as she dumped another pitcher of water over Alex’s head, prompting a terrible bout of sputtering and coughing. “You should show some respect when addressing me.”

“I just—holy- _ack!—_ come on, Astra,” Alex griped, choking on heavily scented water and a pitcher poured without warning. She would have splashed her-highness-the-countess if she hadn’t already discarded her apron, looking so damn perfect in her sparkly dress. “I just don’t understand how you ended up here, ‘s all.”

“When the war broke out, Romania was one of the first countries to fall in the central region of Europe,” Astra explained. “We were less concerned with the global implications of combat, instead focusing our efforts on reclaiming Transylvania from Hungary, for many of our people lived in the region, and yet… and yet they were countrymen to another regime,” Astra explained. “And so France, and Russia, and England sent incentives by rail, and by air, and even by land, to defend our country against Bulgaria to the south, but… but it did not matter, not in the grand scheme of warfare.”

“It was… expansive,” Alex commented. “I mean, all the destruction that reached lands once considered plain countryside. They weren’t attacking city-centers any more—”

Astra nodded solemnly. “One evening,” Astra began, rising and crossing to the vanity, “Comet and I set out to warn the French scouts of German infiltration.” Astra returned with a hand-crafted box and removed brooches and pins and tiny glass jars, all very small, and all very expensive. “We traveled through the woods leisurely, at the beginning, but the Germans soon found that we were crossing the territorial line, and gave chase.”

“You were… you were pursued by the enemy?”

“In automobiles, thankfully,” Astra amended. “The forest was too thick for many of their vehicles, though the trees hardly stopped their weapons.”

“Comet’s scar tissue,” Alex remarked. “That back left leg…”

“He took that bullet at the beginning of our journey, but never flagged,” Astra recounted. “I dove beneath limbs and led him round treacherously uneven terrain, just to avoid the machine guns… but I took one bullet to the shoulder…”

“Your arm?”

“Comet was injured more than I,” she continued. “And the trucks did not relent. Nor did the motor-bikes. Our home was under siege, and the French reinforcements had camped to the north, beyond the river, past the cliffs in the Eastern Carpathians…”

“…he jumped off a cliff to save you?” Alex asked, though the scene played before her as clearly as her evenings at the pictures. She saw Astra, hooded in black, curls coming undone from the top of her head and cloak billowing out behind her, pressing Comet at top speed, into the wilderness, as bullets ricocheted off tree trunks and ended up embedded in the uneven terrain of the mountain forests. She saw them leaping over a cliff, into a lake below, desperate to escape, desperate to _survive._

“It was the only way we could notify the army,” Astra said, squeezing a sponge over Alex’s shoulder and raking it down against her back. “But by the time we had returned… my family had been… had been…”

“Astra,” Alex turned in the water and could do nothing more than hold Astra at her forearms. She wanted to press against her, to tell her things would be alright, but she couldn’t ruin her outfit, or her beautiful hair, her stained lips, her tempest-grey eyes lined with kohl. Alex instead gazed at her, in awe of her, to come from a royal house to this life, scraping by on novelties and charity; it was nothing that Astra might have been accustomed to in her home country, not even with Kara by her side. “You came here to escape but… but…”

“Things did not happen as we had planned? That is entirely the case, Alex Danvers,” Astra said, moving a wet lock of hair behind Alex’s ear. “I was fortunate enough to escape on a ship with Kara, with my horses, some of my things… but I realized very quickly that clout and society and titles in Europe do not hold in this modern age, especially when my closest relations are dead... my friends, displaced, debtors in their own right. Back home, things were refined though less efficient; I cannot claim to dislike it, the vulgarity of commerce, for I have never been as fascinated before by such advancements: motor cars, electricity, telephones…”

“But you’re… you’re a _princess_!”

“I am a Countess,” Astra replied archly, settling back into her chair and crossing her legs, the hem of her dress riding dangerously higher. “There is a difference.”

“You dive off platforms into water wells and you… you’ve lived in a castle!”

“And now I live in something of a hovel, but Kara and I need little else,” she said wistfully looking off to the bedroom beyond. Kara must’ve been dozing peacefully. Alex felt sudden shame mount, thinking of her swears and curses and insinuations. She’d never minded her mouth before, but with Astra— _Countess_ Astra—holding her tongue seemed like more of an issue.

“I have a wonderful landlord who has worked very hard to maintain this property.”

“It’s not the safest area, Astra.”

“I know. But it is what we can afford, for now. M’gann is a refugee as well, but her tireless work at the bar enabled her to purchase the property, to let it for people just… doing their best, I suppose. And when prohibition took root, she had the house to supplement her income. She is very smart, and very kind.”

“Is she your friend?” Alex asked.

“Perhaps my only. You know, many of the boarders here are soldiers. Ones who… it would be difficult for them to pay rents for places like this in another sector of the city. Especially when they are haunted as they are. _Wounded_ , as they are.”

“But you have…” Alex stared back at the box in Astra’s hand. Just one of those brooches would be enough to keep Alex in decent lodgings for a month. “Jewels and… and other stuff.”

Astra sighed. Her attention wavered, her focus roaming over the walls, the furniture, other bits and bobs that Alex had not fully noticed upon entering, but now… she suspected there was more to the place than met the eye.

“If my appraisals have any merit, I have enough in that box there—” Astra indicated the jewelry case of necklaces and rings and finery, “—to settle a score of debts that enabled Kara and I to escape when we did. This furniture? None of it mine. The china, the linens, the baubles and knick-knacks and homey touches? M’gann would never pity me, but she wouldn’t dare allow Kara to grow up in a place devoid of character.”

“How bad are the debts?”

“Nearly settled, though I fear I had not properly projected interest charges, as well as the costs for taking care of someone other than myself,” Astra sighed, her focus, again, gravitating toward the back room. “I’ll take my box of jewels and that will be it, Alexandra. That and my saddle will be just enough to set us right in California, if only we could get there!”

“Hey,” Alex said, twisting and rising from the water, reaching out for Astra’s hand, careful not to wet her dress. Astra turned back and her muscles jumped beneath Alex’s touch. The damp slide of her skin against Astra’s hands (regal hands, soft hands, hands that could easily undo her) must’ve caught her off guard, for when Astra turned back to her she lurched, unintentionally, forward, until she was close enough for Alex to see the storm, for Alex to get swept up by the winds of her breath, the crackling, scented ozone in her perfume, the unsteady quiver of her lip.

“Astra.”

“Alexandra,” Astra murmured, her cheeks flushing; her lashes, fluttering black and curved over almond-shaped eyes; her lips gaping, desperately wanting to release the kiss Alex had coveted since their introduction. “You are a beautiful woman.”

“Thank… thank you,” Alex said, for even though this was not the first time she had heard such a statement, it was the first time she _believed_ it.

“And what you are doing is…”

Was Astra going to hug her? Her arm was moving, or was it _Alex_ that was moving? Or were they both sitting statue-still? Was Alex hovering out of the water like one of the mermaids she’d imagined as a child back on the beach in Brooklyn? And if she was a mermaid, then what was Astra? A star? A storm?

Or perhaps a knight riding in the forest, slaying dragons and rescuing princesses from castles, only to be cast into the gutter once she sought refuge in another kingdom.

“Words cannot express my gratitude,” Astra lingered near her and Alex’s vision swam with her, her face, her neckline, the angle of her jaw and the curve of her ear, the waves of her hair, the sparkle of the costume jewelry at her neck. But more than that… she saw her history, a diadem on her head, jewels at her throat, a sash across her chest, her thighs clutching against the leather on that saddle as she fired a pistol over her shoulder, galloping for help in the dark night. Alex saw a woman prepared to leave everything she knew to keep her niece safe. She saw the opposite of pride; a queen turned sideshow, an aristocrat who buttered bread and scrubbed the dirt from her fingernails and took a curry brush to the coat of her own mount.

Alex saw a star within reach, if only she were brave enough to grab it.

“Then… then no thanks necessary,” Alex gulped, shivering as a draft hit her wet, naked back. The chill crept over her, as did Astra’s gaze, but she did not falter beneath it. How could she? This woman had been so strong before, and now she needed her help. And so Alex would be strong, would hold her stare, because Astra wasn’t looking away, either.

“No, a thank-you is very much in order,” Astra pressed, diving ever closer, the eye of the storm, the calm of it, the beauty of it, so close Alex could taste it on her tongue. “But no words,” Astra whispered, before sealing her lips over Alex’s.

And though it might have taken them a touch longer than they had estimated to arrive at the club, Alex at the tables in her gold, Astra backstage in her black, Alex would not have traded the half hour spent of Astra expressing her deepest gratitude for all the jewels in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well now my outline says 4 chapters and i hate myself but also this got really romantic and self indulgent but oh well

**Author's Note:**

> y'all i don't even know i love history so much and look there pictures!!!!
> 
> and yeah i know of course its not finished its 1920 we gotta go to a speakeasy :))))))))


End file.
